Between Text & Community : The "Writings" in Canonical Interpretation

"Donn F. Morgan's book represents the best sustained effort to focus on the Writings of the Hebrew Bible as part of the Jewish canon. His thesis that the Writings reflect dialogues between various and disparate Jewish communities and the texts of the Torah and the Prophets deserves serious attention and debate. He rightly focuses on the needs of those communities and the hermeneutics by which they read Torah and Prophets in order to address those needs.

Morgan's book is also the best attempt I have so far seen to compare, contrast, and combine the two quite different approaches to study of canon associated with Brevard Childs and myself. I am impressed with some of the evaluations he makes of what we and our students have both been trying, in remarkably different ways, to do with the concept of canon."
– James A. Sanders, Professor Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology

"This small monograph serves as a stimulating introduction to the Writings, but more importantly it is a reminder that these texts give us a clue to better understanding the particularity of being a Christian or Jew in a richly pluralistic world."
– Kent Harold Richards, Interpretation

"Morgan has produced an intriguing, thoroughly modern paradigm for working with Scripture."
– Christopher R. Seitz, Professor of Old Testament and Theological Studies, St. Andrews University

Donn F. Morgan is President and Dean, and Professor of Old Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Graduate Theological Union), Berkeley. His books include The Making of Sages: Biblical Wisdom and Contemporary Culture (Trinity Press International, 2002) and Wisdom in the Old Testament Traditions (John Knox, 1981).